Winners' war (Edmundson)

The barbaric lynching of the barbarous Saddam Hussein achieved what almost everyone had assumed to be impossible: to make the former tyrant look like a martyr. And the timing? By one measure, poor: the US handed Saddam over to his enemies--including elements of the Mahdi army--on the eve of the Islamic period of atonement. But by another, not bad: the handover successfully obscured media coverage of the 3000th (official) US troop fatality. This handful of dust in the eye was of no small importance, given the absence of any public adjustment of policy in the aftermath of the Iraq Study Group report, the parting advice of Rumsfeld to "downsize the mission," and the midterm congressional elections' repudiation of the standing policy of "stay the course" (which not even Bush cared to defend).

So now what? Acting President Cheney and al-Maliki have evidently agreed upon terms for a final, triumphant "surge" of US forces coinciding with a handover to the Shi'ite majority and abandonment of the Sunni minority to its fate. The Telegraph (Jan. 6) reports:

Mr Bush spent nearly two hours speaking to Mr Maliki on Thursday [Jan. 4].
Officials said he was seeking to persuade the Iraqi premier to accept
an increase in American troops and emphasised that they would be used
primarily to battle Sunni insurgents [italics added].

Added persuaders: another $1,000,000,000 for "job creation," and the banishment of US ambassador Khalizad--a Sunni of Afghan extraction--to a post at the dubiously relevant United Nations.

[Addendum: The New York Times (Jan. 6) recounts the farcical events leading up to Saddam's extraordinary
rendition, which was ordered over the objections of the US ground command by Condolezza Rice and Stephen Hadley for the declared reason that "we're not going to be their legal nannies."]